Dyslexia — a lifelong condition that affects reading, writing, spelling and speaking — may be a common condition but it’s still not widely understood.

With a bit of Web code, one man is making it easier for others to understand how reading with dyslexia might feel. The idea came to Victor Widell after his dyslexic friend told him letters seemed to swap in out of place when she looked at words.

“Although it is considered to be a receptive language-based learning disability in the research literature, dyslexia also affects one’s expressive language skills. Researchers at MIT found that people with dyslexia exhibited impaired voice-recognition abilities.”

One of many types

To be clear, Widell’s simulation is not perfect. There are many forms of dyslexia and not everyone diagnosed with it experiences reading this way. But seeing nonexistent movement in words and seeing letters like “d”, “b”, “p”, “q” rotated is common among people with dyslexia.

Some commenters on Widell’s blog said his text mirrored their experience; others said theirs was slightly different or even more difficult.

One person said his appeared as a vertical jumbling where “words and letters swap into preceding and following lines.”